Hear the Sunshine
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About this ebook
Two old men were sitting in the park one day talking. One guy said “My son just bought me this great new hearing aid. I can hear everything with it perfectly.”
The second old man said “Wow, that’s great. What kind is it?”
The first old man pulled out his pocket watch, looked at it a moment then replied “It’s about quarter to three.”
When I tell someone that I’m deaf they automatically assume I mean “deaf as a post” and then get mad with me if they discover otherwise. The little joke above proves that the man with the new hearing aid is also deaf even though he is functioning in a conversation fairly well. None the less, by definition, he is deaf just not deaf as a post and neither was I until much later in life.
Charles Wells
I was asked why I'm a writer and responded with the following. I didn't choose writing, it chose me. I've spent the better part of my life (and I'm 60 years old) writing, but I still hesitate to call myself an Author. I've written and published seven books, six are fiction, and still I don't feel like a writer because I don't fit my mental image of one. I don't feel compelled to be the next Mark Twain or Tom Clancy. I don't want to get filthy rich from my writing and I don't care for the glory of being recognized while walking down the street. All I want to do is entertain people and hold that wisp of power and control knowing I can make you laugh, or make you cry. I can take you to heaven or send you straight to hell, all with a few words placed appropriately. I can do in one paragraph what God needs seven days to accomplish. Best of all, I can make you think great thoughts or I can help you dream in a reality that I create. A reality you can enjoin or not with the flip of a book cover or press of a digital reader button. All of this isn't writing, it's insanity and escape for the sake of entertainment.http://www.charleswells.usBefore turning to fiction writing, Wells spent most of his career as a newspaper reporter and journalist in middle Georgia. He covered everything from high school sports to front page news stories. During the last fourteen years of his career he worked as Managing Editor for “The Robins Review” a military town’s 25,000 weekly edition publication. The city’s mixed population of civilian and military called for a unique brand of writing skills that Wells found comfortable supplying. The highlight of his career was in 1988 when a sharply written article was picked up by the national wire services and republished around the world. The topic was the advance of technology in the Air Force’s electronic warfare division and aptly titled “Stone Age to Star Wars.” Copies of the article made it to the desk of then President Ronald Regan who had initially emblazoned the term into the minds of the world.The article also caught the attention of an NBC News Producer as well as ABC’s nightline’s Associate Producer, Terry Irving. The sad news through it all was that just as Wells’ writing career was taking off, his personal world was “going south and silent.” Plagued since childhood by an ongoing progressive hearing loss, Charles Wells lost all usable hearing and went completely deaf. When the handicap peaked, Wells found it impossible to function for the newspaper any longer and resigned at age 38. He fell back on his original “day job” returning to work as an electronics technician at the same military base where he once “entertained the troops.” When his hearing problems also unraveled his efforts there, he threw in the towel, took a disability from service and dropped out of sight for three long years.During that time he switched his writing presentations from the “pomp and ceremony” of print to the more open and space filling approach of the www. The writing needs of that medium grew to an insatiable level as more and more quality articles and information was needed to fill the millions of web pages springing up online. Best of all, those markets offered Wells a “deaf friendly” environment in which to work. He began his new career using old skills after refocusing his talents and adjusting them to the new technology and class of readers it presented. By swapping pen and paper for a keyboard and mouse, he positioned himself on the cusped of the informational highway. Still, he needed to crack the shell and get inside the medium which meant calling on his reputation as an old print writer and trying to capture the younger audiences of the internet.Normally bashful about self promotion, Wells shamelessly flaunted his accomplishments from the newspapers and soon gained the attention of higher ups in the news organizations that were testing the waters to see if there really was an audience online. All those “loud noises” made during his print career opened the doors for Wells and landed him a “digital online” job with CNN News of Atlanta. His “computer based” job description became one of the first “telecommuter” jobs in the world and for the next year he worked from home full time.CNN’s bold move to the internet was followed by a joint venture between computer software giant Microsoft and television’s NBC network. The two companies formed what is today MSNBC and then took CNN’s internet/TV interactive format and ran it deeper into the digital realms of society. Both networks quickly discovered the power behind having instant viewer response taken from “online news chat rooms.” MSNBC realized it faster and quickly moved the concept deeper passing CNN’s online presence during the second year of operations. After that, MSNBC became the envy of every news operation on earth especially to those wanting to work for them on the computer. Wells, still with CNN when MSNBC went flying past, watched and waited, trying to gauge the right moment to attempt a jump over to MSNBC. That moment came when MSNBC hired ABC’s Terry Irving and put him in charge of the “Don Imus in the Morning” simulcast show on the network. Irving’s first order of the day was to start an online interactive chat room and the man he wanted to operate it was Charles Wells. He had quietly spent a lot of time online in the CNN chats and had watched how well Charles had interacted and inspired comments from the users, comments that quite often made it to the bottom of any given news show’s TV’s screen as well.Wells enjoyed the interactivity and fun dealing with regular people online and relaying their questions and responses over to the on air television people. Best of all, his handicap wasn’t an issue or a problem. It never interfered with his work because one didn’t need to hear the words spoken. His computer scrolled them across his screen flawlessly. Still, Wells was a writer at heart and the tug to write fiction adventure stories was still strong but dormant.During the year he stayed at CNN he was constantly asking for web space in which he could write short journalistic features, a concept that today is referred to as “Blogging.” Wells idea was simply too far ahead of the times and his idea fell on deaf yet hearing ears at CNN. When he persisted and then demanded the space, his manager made it clear that CNN was not interested and to not mention it again. They felt that online readers would never sit still long enough to read a thousand words of personal opinions and commentary.Frustrated at the lack of insight shown by his employer, Wells resigned and almost gave up entirely on his attempt to join the web. He was on the verge of unplugging the computer when Terry Irving heard about his departure from CNN and dropped him an email asking if he was interested in opening a new chat room for radio personality Don Imus. Wells agreed to do so on the condition that he would get a small spot on the MSNBC website to write his daily commentary feature. Irving loved the idea and six weeks later, Imus in The Morning on MSNBC took to the air on the same day that “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” by Charles Wells hit the MSNBC web pages. It lasted over eight years and Wells never missed a deadline.The highlight, if one cares to look at it that way, of his career at MSNBC happened on that fateful morning of September 11, 2001. Wells was in charge of the morning Imus chat and assisting another host working in the news room chats. Between the two, there were over 150 visitors in the two chat rooms when the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center. His steady and cool handling of site visitors as they flooded in for the latest information, established his reputation as being one of the internet’s top hosts controllers after he juggled a staggering 2400 chatters solo for almost an hour until help could arrive. He then stayed on duty for a solid twelve hours straight.Even with such public exposure under his belt, Wells did not feel quite ready for prime book publishing especially since he was switching from factual reporting to fiction mystery as his genre of choice. After MSNBC ended the chat room days and let Wells and a dozen others go, he stayed below the radar for several years until 2009 when his first fiction novel hit the markets under the name “Sand Hill Estates the Murders.” That book, one of the first classes of digital only books offered online, trudged along quietly with modest sales but drew few raves or reviews outside the mystery community. In 2010 he took the characters and plots and reworked them, then expanded into today’s “Whispering Pines.” From one book grew a six and counting series of fast paced suspense thrillers geared for all age groups. Book seven has a tentative release date of January 2012.On several occasions during interviews, Wells was asked if he had plans yet to eventually wrap and end the series. “I haven’t told all the stories yet so no. At this time I’ve still got one story in progress and two more in mind waiting.”
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Hear the Sunshine - Charles Wells
Hear the Sunshine
A True Story
Copyright @ Charles E Wells
Published at Smashwords
For Charles E Wells
Georgia USA
http://www.wellstonpublishing.com
This book is dedicated to those who refuse to give up regardless of the odds.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
About The Author
Chapter 1
Two old men were sitting in the park one day talking. One guy said, My son just bought me this great new hearing aid. I can hear everything with it perfectly.
The second old man said, Wow, that’s great. What kind is it?
The first old man pulled out his pocket watch, looked at it a moment then replied. It’s about quarter to three.
***
When I tell someone that I’m deaf, they automatically assume I mean deaf as a post
and then get mad with me when they discover otherwise. The little joke above proves the man with the new hearing aid is also deaf even though he functions in a conversation. Nonetheless, by definition, he is deaf, just not deaf as a post and neither was I until much later in life.
When I tell people I am deaf, they assume I mean deaf as in, I wouldn’t hear a train coming if I were standing in the middle of the tracks. I’ve learned to live with that because human nature is human nature. It's not something you’ll change overnight.
Before my Cochlear implant in 1987, I could still hear some sounds. I could even talk on the phone with known
voices such as family members, but I couldn’t understand or grasp most of the words. I finally gave up and stopped using the phone about ten years before the implant surgery. My beautiful wife, Gail, became my speech coach and helped me avoid the expected monotone deaf enunciations
that some deaf people develop.
She and I developed a system of signs between us that works to this day. When she hears me slur a few words, she will caution me with a pointing finger movement right to left. If I let my volume get too loud, she will motion downward with the same finger or motion upward if speaking too softly.
She is my true lifesaver through this entire nightmare of hearing loss ever since we married in 1973. She is half the reason I continued to fight for hearing and I can’t thank her enough or love any other human on this planet equally or above how much I love her.
But, using the phone was simply too much strain on my nerves and not worth the aggravation. Had cell phones and text messaging been around back in the 1980’s I probably would have just accepted the loss and given up my war against silence.
Even today with cell phones and text messaging, I tell people I’m deaf because my implant is not perfect. I can understand sixty percent of the words I hear but I still end up like the old guy in the joke above. Sixty percent comprehension is still missing forty percent. I have to fill in the blanks
or take an educated
guess on the other 40 percent. Sometimes I guess right (Kind) and sometimes I guess wrong. (Time)
Doctors of Audiology tell me that I’ve learned to use that sixty percent efficiently because my guessing
and filling in the blanks
has shown more luck than a riverboat gambler. Still, it’s a nerve wrecking thing to be guessing rather than understanding with confidence. Here’s an example of that issue.
I walk up to a person holding a dog on a leash. The dog starts barking and I hear the owner say The… dog… you.
That’s all the statement that I’m able to understand over the barking and other background noises around me. Is that dog owner telling me The dog will bite you
or perhaps are they saying, The dog really likes you.
I have to guess which version is correct (if either) but keep my hands in my pockets until I’m sure the person said, The dog really likes you. He’s happily barking.
When you think about the above, it explains why it’s much easier to tell people that I’m deaf and let their own imagination define it. The problems don’t start until they figure out that I’m not as deaf as a post. When that happens they act offended because nobody likes being conned or lied to and they, right or wrong, think that I’ve done just that, conned them.
Here’s an example of a real easy con to spot. You see a man seated on the sidewalk. He’s wearing dark sunglasses and there is a sign propped up saying, Please help me, I’m blind
. You feel sorry for the guy, reach in your pocket and drop all your loose change into the cup at his feet. Three days later, you are coming down that same sidewalk and there sits the same man, same sign, and same dark sunglasses, only this time he’s reading a newspaper with his blind
eyes. That’s when you realize you’ve been conned. When people discover that I’m not deaf as a post
, they react much like you would after seeing that blind man reading a newspaper. I’ve conned them, they think.When forced to explain to someone that I didn’t understand, they try to justify their embarrassment. I’m fully aware that I’m deaf and my handicap is not something easily spotted. It’s not like I was on crutches or riding in a wheelchair. I’m not limping along on an artificial leg or using a tong to pick up stuff with an artificial arm either. Those handicapped people have it easy so far as being spotted. Want to hear something really funny? Several years ago I injured my ankle and was on crutches for several weeks. During that time, I could explain my being deaf to anyone and they acted sympathetic and very understanding about it. They saw the crutches and I guess their minds were able to pass that pity for my ankle on to my ears. Heck, I don’t know what they were thinking.
Have you ever wondered why some blind people wear dark sunglasses? What do they need them for? They can’t see anything, can they? Why don’t you go running up to one and demand to know why they are wearing sunglasses if they are blind. I’ve asked a few about it (nicely mind you) and most of the ones I’ve talked to are some of the friendliest people on earth. One man told me he wore the glasses because his sister said his eyes looked weird
without them. Heck, even a few of the blind people I’ve met own a seeing eye dog and when that person senses you approaching they might say The… dog…you.
Okay, that’s what I hear at least.
Here’s another good example of what I mean about being deaf and getting the negative treatment from a total stranger. I was in line at the bank one day and a nice young lady in front of me turned around and asked me something that I didn’t understand. I said, I’m sorry, I’m deaf. What did you say?
About the time I got those words out of my mouth, a very loud noise erupted behind me and I turned to see what had caused it. Some man had knocked a metal ink pen holder off a table and it clattered loudly onto the hard tile floor. To be perfectly honest about it, I felt the vibrations on the floor through my shoes and that’s what actually triggered me into looking more than actually hearing it hit the floor. Either way, I turned to see what commotion was all about.
When I told the lady that I was deaf, she obviously assumed I meant as a post.
So when I turned back around to face her, she was standing there glaring at me with pure evil in her eyes. She snapped and said, I thought you just told me you were deaf but you certainly heard that didn’t you?
Yes ‘Mam, I certainly did. I’m hard of hearing.
Then why did you say you were deaf? There’s a difference, you know, because if you were deaf then you couldn’t have heard that thing hit the floor behind you. Why don’t you just get a hearing aid or is it because you are too ashamed to be seen wearing one? My Father wears one proudly and he’s not ashamed to be seen wearing it.
Good for your Father. I’m sure you’re very proud of the fact that he is handicapped.
Huh? He’s not handicapped he just wears a hearing aid. My goodness you have a chip on your shoulder, don’t you?
Trust me Mam, one day I’ll write a book about it.
I apologize here and now to that lady for having taken about twenty years getting around to writing that book, but here it is for you. If